Preview by Flaco Jones

Flaco's Winter 2016 Movie Preview

Winter movie season: Hollywood's snowy dumping ground for films that couldn't make the cut elsewhere. Okay, maybe that's a bit rough, but it can be somewhat lackluster. That seems to be the case for January, as there isn't much to look forward to, but February is there to save the day with superheroes and supermodels.

JANUARY 22

The 5th Wave

No, this isn't the Independence Day sequel but it certainly owes a lot to that and many other alien invasion movies. It seems like a catch all for the genre as it takes a lot of elements from so many other works. Will those parts come together to make a decent movie?

The Boy

It's hard to tell if the trailer is meant to creep you out or make you laugh. A concept like this is hard to keep out of camp territory. All that's left is to see the end result and how scary and/or funny it is.

JANUARY 29

Kung Fu Panda 3

I honestly didn't remember that there was even a second film in this franchise, but there was and it did pretty well, especially in the international market. I guess that's the reason movies like these and the Smurf and Chipmunk sequels keep getting made.

FEBRUARY 5

Pride and Prejudice and Zombies

Every time I think the zombie genre is, well, done, it keeps... Oh you get the joke already. Still, this twist could make things more interesting. We already had Abraham Lincoln fighting vampires, so this isn't any bigger a leap than that.

Hail, Caesar!

It's my list, so of course if I can inject a Coen brothers film into the mix, especially during a slow season, then I will. The past few Coen comedies haven't been stellar though, so here's hoping this is closer to Big Lebowski quality than to Intolerable Cruelty.

FEBRUARY 12

Deadpool

Finally, we get some big ticket movies in the winter, so of course, why not release them on the same weekend. Thanks, Hollywood! Anyways, first up is the long awaited resurrection of Deadpool, last seen buried under tons of terrible makeup in the awful Wolverine origin movie. Ryan Reynolds is back in the superhero genre after stinking up both that film and the Green Lantern adaptation, but something tells me he gets it right this time.

Zoolander 2

The other big release is this long awaited sequel to the surprise hit comedy. It probably took so long because while it did well, it didn't shatter any box office records. It also couldn't hurt that Ben Stiller hasn't had a big hit outside of a museum setting in a while and wanted to get on top of his game again.

FEBRUARY 26

Gods of Egypt

I know this movie looks pretty bad from the trailer but the director, Alex Proyas, made one of my all-time favorite sci-fi movies in Dark City, so I'll always try to give him the benefit of the doubt. Hopefully this ends up being a hidden gem.

And that does it for winter. Spring is around the corner, and it's looking even more like an early summer slate of movies, so don't miss that preview in March! Don't forget to rank the winter movies below and participate in the comments on the movies I didn't get around to featuring or going into further depth on the ones I did.

Flaco Jones is a former film school grad and current professional A/V nerd. You can follow him @flaco_jones on Twitter.

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